


A Shadow Cast on Me

by GayAsAnArrow



Series: Soulmarks Series [2]
Category: Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, M/M, Mentioned Zack/Aerith, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-22
Updated: 2019-09-22
Packaged: 2020-11-02 11:20:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20728421
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GayAsAnArrow/pseuds/GayAsAnArrow
Summary: A black soulmark usually means a dead soulmate. But Cloud's arrives black as oil. The shape of a hand over his chest.Part Two of the Soulmarks Series





	A Shadow Cast on Me

“I told you!” One of the boys was yelling. “Look!”

Cloud couldn’t focus on who was yelling. He was trying to catch his breath. To wipe the blood off his face and pretend he wasn’t wiping tears too. Twelve years old, and scrawny, and no one, and the _ last _ thing he needed was another thing that made him weirder. And now they were all staring. Even Tifa.  
  
He pressed his small hand over the soulmark across his chest. A pitch black handprint, so much bigger than his own hands. Spread across his chest. So neat, so stark, completely unmistakable as anything else. Cloud’s fist, where he balled it up against his exposed chest, was smaller than the palm of the shadow hand imprinted on him.  
  
“Weird,” Another boy was saying, with a sort of awed confusion. “I thought only dead soulmarks turned black.”

“It’s not dead!” Cloud snapped, hating the way his voice shook, hating his body for the fear that held it immobile. Hating his hand for being too small to cover the soulmark from their scrutiny.  
  
“Come on, leave him alone.” Tifa was urging, though her eyes were fixed on his chest with the same curiosity as the others. And pity? No, he couldn’t handle that on top of everything, Tifa…  
  
She offered him a hand up, and he felt the tears fall heavier. Because even as he pushed her hand away that sealed it. The one person in the world he would have liked to be soulmates with, and he shoved her hand away and took off towards home. Their touch would never leave a mark on the other. There was some stranger meant for him.

Or there had been. A black soulmark… That meant a dead soulmate, but….  
  
“She has to be alive, right?” He asked his mother, his torn shirt clutched in his hands, snot and blood drying on his face. “It showed up like this, and no one’s ever… So she has to be alive, right?”

“Right,” His mother said, squeezing his shoulders. “Absolutely right.”

In the shower, cleaning the dust off himself, Cloud stared down at the handprint on his chest. Just below his sternum. A little diagonal. The palm starting just over his heart, the thumb almost brushing his collarbones, the long fingers diagonally pressed against his sternum. It was so dark it was like a hole in his chest. Like if he stared too long he’d fall in. Like something was missing. Would always be missing.

He covered it with both his hands and closed his eyes, trying to imagine who was unlucky enough to have his mark imprinted on their palm.

* * *

Potions didn’t do everything. They’d stitch a wound, but to recover from blood loss or exhaustion there was nothing but rest and fluids. Which would have to wait. Cloud wavered, sucking in a breath and firming his stance. Blinked behind the sweltering trooper mask, salt stinging his eyes, the heat of his own breath almost unbearable as he panted. His own blood was drying on his uniform, uncomfortably sticky and stiff.

Their mission had succeeded, which meant they needed to stand at attention while Heideggar and the generals passed, saluting their victory. One of the other troopers elbowed him, not unkindly, when it was time to throw up the salute. Cloud dragged his hand up to salute, feeling the weight of the motion as if he were moving underwater. He watched their gloating leader Heideggar approach and was glad he had his mask on to hide his distasteful expression. But behind Heideggar...

Sephiroth. 

The closest Cloud had ever seen him. His motions so smooth he could have been floating. His hair a banner behind him. Whispers of silver caught the sun. His acid eyes distant. His expression hard. 

Cloud swallowed around a dry mouth, fixated on him. His salute wavered. His pulse thrummed in his ears. He only barely noticed the world tunneling down around him until it was just Sephiroth. He couldn’t catch a breath as those acid eyes twitched down and fixed on him.

Then he was falling, his knees buckling, his body giving out under the heat and the stress and the amazement and—

A hand on his chest stopped him from crumpling to the ground. Caught all his weight against long fingers. Palm just over his heart. Thumb almost brushing his collarbone. Cloud’s head swam.

“Easy, trooper.” That low voice rumbled, and Cloud sucked in a breath, his hand twitching up, wanting to grab that wrist, to hold him there, to—

Sephiroth’s hand vanished from Cloud’s chest as if it had never been there. And Cloud was left swaying, sucking in breaths, with an answer at last to the burning hole in his chest. Watching the one who had made it walk away as if nothing had happened.

* * *

Hojo was yelling about it. Sephiroth stayed still, looking down at his palm. At the stark black ‘1’ tattooed in the center. At the new mark striking around it. The golden marks like lightning streaking across his flesh. Wild and vibrant on his cold palm. Solid bands of gold bordering them and his handprint both. As if he’d laid his left hand on a painting and pulled it free with a lingering image clinging to his skin.

Stupid, he told himself. His heart. Foolish. It will only cause pain. But he had to fight back a smile at the way the lightning forked over the ‘1’ as if it wasn’t there.

Hojo experimented with the meat of his palm. Cutting away the skin. But the mark grew back along with the scar. Sephiroth, sixteen years old, sat stone faced and silently enjoyed watching the professor’s consternation, even as he breathed through the pain.

Hojo forbade him to ever take his gloves off, in the end.

“They’ll be shoving your hand at any rich bimbo with a handprint soulmark if they know.” He groused. “You’re far too valuable to let the president simply start thinking of you as marriage material and breeding stock. 

Sephiroth’s stomach soured at the thought. He clenched his soulmarked hand into a fist inside his glove and tried to peel his mind away from it. Silently started a new protocol for himself. Trained himself to use his non-dominant right hand in formal functions. For handshakes. Even for strikes in barehanded sparring.

There were two people on the planet he wouldn’t have minded, and both of them were free of strange handprint markings. If they had soulmarks, they hadn’t shown him. And knowing Genesis, he’d have paraded it if he had one.

So he held off on showing them, though perhaps, he thought, they would have some insight. But he didn’t want them to see the tattoo…

And then he was out of time to ask them anything at all, and it was just one in a list of a thousand things he wished he’d said.

* * *

“Hey Zack?” Cloud said as they walked back from their dinner out at the greasiest restaurant on top of the plate. After all, Cloud wasn’t rich enough to turn down a free dinner, even if Zack did insist on calling it a ‘date.’

“That’s me!” Zack said, his arms swinging easily at his sides as he walked— more relaxed in every moment than Cloud had been his whole life.

“You have a soul mark, right?” Cloud said hesitantly. “Some of the guys said—”

“I do,” Zack answered with a friendly grin. “Wanna see?”

“Um,” Cloud started, but Zack was already unhooking his broad SOLDIER belt and pulling his shirt up, turning his back. Cloud stared at the layers and layers of vines twisting up and around Zack’s back. Bold and brash and handsome and _ perfect _ for him. Of course it was…

“Neat, right?” Zack asked, still half-undressing in the middle of the street. “You should meet her, she’s…”

He trailed off, and when he turned back to Cloud, it was with the softest look Cloud had ever seen on his face.

“She’s amazing.” He said at last, hooking his belt back into place, even though his shirt was still untucked and rumpled.

“I bet.” Cloud said, dragging a smile up out of his tattered emotions. 

Zack didn’t need the added weight, he told himself. Everyone had noticed. How hard he was trying. To fill the shoes that had been left for him. He’d been aiming to cheer him up with his acceptance of the ‘date.’ Not to put more on him.

“Heh.” Zack grinned, looking forward again, that warm look not leaving his face as he strolled down the street. Cloud watched him a moment, then tried to match his gait. It was almost as easy as matching his smile. When it was Zack, it was always easy.

“So,” Zack said after a bit. “You have one too?”  
  
“What?” Cloud blinked out of his thoughts and stepped out of synch with Zack once more.

“You asked cuz you have one too, right?” Zack asked, his eyes laughing under his newly slicked-back hair. “What’s up? Still trying to find them?”

“No,” Cloud said after a moment. “I found them. But… I…”

He glanced around, then lifted his shirt to show Zack the black mark on his chest.

“Spike...” Zack whispered, at the sight, blinking at the wide palm perfectly captured on Cloud’s chest.

“It’s Sephiroth.” Cloud whispered, feeling his eyes burn with tears. “But Zack, he… He didn’t even notice. I’ll probably never even _ see _ him that close again. What am I supposed to do?”

* * *

“Hey,” Zack was half a step behind Sephiroth, but he didn’t mind. It was more than enough that Sephiroth still walked with him at all. “What do you think of Spike?” 

“The trooper you’ve taken a shine to?” Sephiroth asked without looking back. “He has potential. Why do you ask?”

“Dunno,” Zack said. “I was thinking we could take him along on our next mission? Get the feel for his work. How he, you know, gels with the team!”

“Fine,” Sephiroth said, and Zack let his smile drop as the man kept walking without changing pace. “If you think he’ll be a good fit I’ll ask Lazard to assign him next time we need to fill the ranks.”

“But… you won’t be happy about it.” Zack guessed after a moment.

“I’d prefer to work alone.” Sephiroth said, pausing so abruptly Zack almost walked into him. When he turned to look at him it wasn’t the cruel expression Zack was expecting. He just looked tired. “But that is not currently an option available to me.”

“I know.” Zack said, feeling too small to be standing here. Feeling a burning shame across his back where Buster sword rested, eased only by Aerith’s tattoo wrapping around him like a guard. “There’s a lot to—”

“To do.” Sephiroth interrupted. “And not enough hands to effectively wrangle it. I’ll request your trooper. Perhaps we can fill out the ranks at least somewhat in the near future. At least we have some hopefuls remaining. Remind me of his real name?”

Zack had to fight to keep his smile. He remembered Cloud, looking smaller than he’d ever seen him, with a black handprint like it had been stamped out of his chest and a soulmate who didn’t even know his name.

“Cloud Strife.” Zack said. “From Nibelheim. Another backwater guy like me.”

“Like you?” Sephiroth’s eyes flicked down from the middle distance to stare at Zack. He hummed, but there was a little trace of humor to his face. “I can only hope not.”

“Hey!” Zack objected, though he was laughing before he’d even finished the word. Still friends, he thought desperately. Despite everything we’re still friends at least.

And he’d have paid to see Cloud’s face when Sephiroth informed him that he’d be accompanying them on a mission. And double price to see the silent humor in Sephiroth’s eyes when he announced that their destination was Cloud’s hometown.

They’re perfect for each other, Zack thought. If only they could be in a position to see it. Maybe a nice quiet mission in a backwater town like Nibelheim would be just what the doctor ordered.


End file.
